Shopping carts for use in grocery supermarkets have been known for many years. Since the 1940's the preferred form of construction, providing the strength necessary to withstand the often rigorous conditions of use of such carts, has included a frame constructed of tubular members, with a forwardly extending, U-shaped, tubular beam providing firm support for the lading-carrying basket.
A form of construction in which the basket can be pivoted upward into an out-of-the-way position for storage became popular when so-called over-the-counter shopping carts were introduced for use in supermarkets in the early 1960's. With this pivoted construction, it was necessary to extend the cantilever beam supporting the basket quite far forward in order to provide the support necessary for the basket in its horizontal, operative position. Examples of such carts are the carts disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,245,498 issued to Stanley et al. on Apr. 12, 1966; 3,503,622 issued to Romero on Mar. 31, 1970; 4,116,456 issued to Stover et al. on Sept. 26, 1978; 4,273,346 issued to Rehrig on June 16, 1981; and 4,423,882 issued to Stover et al. on Jan. 3, 1984.
Shopping carts with the pivoted basket construction described have had two shortcomings from their very first introduction over 20 years ago. With those carts that provided auxiliary lower platforms to provide supplementary lading-carrying space, unloading from such platforms was oftentimes inconvenient because of the impediment to access to the lower platform that was presented by the forwardly extending cantilever beam. A second problem was peculiar to so-called discount stores, because the forwardly extending cantilever beam made it impossible to place boxes or cartons of any substantial height on the lower platform, and thus the only way to transport such items with this cart was to lift them up and place them on top of the basket, which was very difficult with many large, heavy items, and often produced a precariously balanced load on top of the cart.
Large stores that sell branded goods--such as consumer durables--at a discount from list prices have been known at least since shortly after the end of the Second World War, and such stores, which are usually located in or around large urban areas, have been very common since sometime in the 1950's. The goods sold in discount stores usually include, among other things, household appliances of various sorts (such as TV sets, clothes washing and drying machines, dishwashers, etc.), furniture of various sizes, cooking grills, and other items of substantial size that may be packaged in quite large corrugated cardboard boxes or cartons. A dolly or stock cart of one description or another has often been used to carry such items from the floor of the discount store to a waiting automobile, truck or van parked in the store parking lot.
Conventional shopping carts have sometimes been used in discount stores to carry items of smaller size from the point of purchase out of the store to the parking lot. The use of shopping carts of this type has, however, of necessity been limited to relatively small items, because even when platforms have been provided at a low level to supplement the lading-carrying space of the shopping basket itself, as already mentioned it has not been possible to place large cartons on such platforms because either the shopping basket or the tubular supporting structure (in a collapsible, telescoping shopping cart) has interfered, and thereby limited the height of the box or carton that can be accommodated.
Because discount stores frequently have a limited number of smaller items for which a conventional shopping cart is useful and because, for the reason given, such a cart is not adapted to carrying many larger items contained in large boxes or cartons, shopping carts of this type have found limited acceptance in discount stores. In order to take care of the problem of transporting items contained in large cartons to the front of the store and out to the parking lot, discount stores have usually relied on stock carts of conventional construction such as a dolly or flatbed cart, and relatively few discount stores have met the dual problems discussed by providing their customers with both conventional shopping carts and conventional stock carts.
The use of two types of carts is complicated and expensive, but if the two types are not used one or the other of the problems of transporting items purchased in the discount store cannot be met. Despite these facts, so far as applicants are aware no one prior to their invention had developed a strongly constructed combination shopping cart and stock cart that can be quickly converted from one function to the other, and thus meet both the problems referred to with a minimum of equipment cost.
The shopping cart disclosed in Shoffner U.S. Pat. No. 3,797,861 is the only cart known to applicant that permits the lading-carrying basket to be swung up entirely out of the way, but that cart omits applicants' important cantilever beam, and relies entirely on various types of abutment means (122, 198, 228 and 320) to provide a stop against movement beyond the horizontal of a pivoted shopping basket as it swings down from its tilted position around a pivot means (106, 186, 218 and 306, respectively), in order to support the basket in its forwardly extending, operative position.
Applicants' cart overcomes all the problems discussed, whether they are presented in a grocery supermarket or in a discount store.